The United States, which recorded its first confirmed case two months ago, now has more than 100,000 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, as reported by states’ health departments. The nation passed 10,000 cases on March 19 and on Thursday became the country with the most confirmed cases.

Shortly after signing a sweeping $2 trillion coronavirus spending package into law, President Trump moved to curb oversight provisions in the legislation and assert presidential authority over a new inspector general’s office created to monitor the disbursement of loans. The decision could set up a momentous battle between the White House and Congress as the administration implements the new law.

Here are some significant developments:

President Trump invoked the Defense Production Act on Friday to force General Motors to manufacture ventilators. U.S. cities have reported acute shortages of masks, test kits and ventilators.

Trump also signed the $2 trillion emergency spending bill, which the House passed on Friday, to combat the economic effects of the pandemic.

Italy reported 919 coronavirus deaths in one day — the largest single-day toll reported by any country. The known death toll from the coronavirus has surpassed 25,000 globally.

The New York City area is the current U.S. epicenter, but the number of confirmed cases is beginning to surge elsewhere. “We also see hot spots like Detroit, like Chicago, like New Orleans, will have a worse week next week,” the surgeon general said Friday.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that 9 in 10 Americans are staying home “as much as possible” and practicing social distancing to lessen the risk of becoming infected.

New Yorkers show appreciation for essential workers with citywide applause

As the fight against the coronavirus pandemic continues, New York residents showed their appreciation for the city’s essential workers Friday night with a two-minute round of applause.

Using the hashtag #ClapBecauseWeCare, the initiative was planned through social media by the Karla Otto public relations agency. Citywide, people were advised that wherever they were at 7 p.m. — gardens, living rooms — they should show their respect and begin clapping.

Trump says he just wants governors to be ‘appreciative’ of White House efforts

In discussing the federal government’s assistance to the states, Trump said he advises Pence not to call governors who aren’t appreciative of what the administration is doing in its response to the coronavirus.

“Mike, don’t call the governor of Washington. You’re wasting your time,” Trump said during the White House media briefing. “Don’t call the woman in Michigan. . . . You know what I say: ‘If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call.’ ”

Asked what he wanted from the two governors he referenced — Jay Inslee of Washington and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan — Trump said, “All I want them to do, very simple, I want them to be appreciative. I don’t want them to say things that aren’t true. I want them to be appreciative.”

Trump, who often measures people by their praise of him, listed the governors who had been complimentary but said, “You know, a couple people aren’t. We have done a hell of a job. The federal government has really stepped up.”

“I’m not going to let personal attacks from the president distract me from what matters: beating this virus and keeping Washingtonians healthy,” he wrote.

Then, shortly after 9 p.m., Trump derided Whitmer as “way in over her [head]” while deploying an insulting nickname.

“Likes blaming everyone for her own ineptitude!” he wrote.

Earlier Friday evening, Whitmer had emphasized in a video posted to Twitter that her state needs more medical equipment, calling Michigan a “hot spot” for the virus.

“It’s on all of us to lock arms and to meet this challenge and to remember the enemy is covid-19,” she urged.

By Colby Itkowitz and Hannah Knowles

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March 27, 2020 at 9:23 PM EDT

Cuomo says New York has secured about half of the ventilators it needs

New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) said Friday night that his state has secured about half of the 30,000 ventilators it needs.

“We need ventilators and we need them now. … My possible apex is 14 days away,” Cuomo told Chris Hayes on MSNBC. “If I don’t have the ventilators in 14 days, Chris, people die.”

Cuomo said his state has received 4,000 ventilators from the federal government. New York had 4,000 in its own hospital system and bought 7,000 more ventilators, in addition to a scattered number of orders which “may or may not” come in, he said.

Cuomo estimated the price of a single ventilator at $2,500.

“We’re scrambling to buy them all across the world. … In a cruel irony, states are bidding against other states, Chris, for the same materials and they are actually bidding up the price,” Cuomo said.

During his Friday news conference, President Trump continued to double down on his comments that New York’s estimates of needing 30,000 ventilators, or more, were high.

“Maybe you send out too much equipment, so what,” Cuomo said. “The real crime and the heartburn is if you have too little. And I’m not even taking an aggressive model. I have a reasonable, numeric model based on our numbers.”

By Samantha Pell

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March 27, 2020 at 9:10 PM EDT

Biden to Trump: ‘Do your job. Stop personalizing everything.’

Former vice president Joe Biden took swings at President Trump’s response to the coronavirus crisis, saying Trump was taking criticism from governors personally, during a live CNN town hall Friday focused on the outbreak.

“This is not personal,” the Democratic presidential hopeful told CNN’s Anderson Cooper via satellite from his home studio in Delaware. “It has nothing to do with you, Donald Trump. Do your job. Stop personalizing everything. Stop it.”

Trump had singled out Democratic Govs. Jay Inslee of Washington and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan earlier Friday, during a White House press briefing, as unappreciative of federal support while their states have been ravaged by the virus. Trump told reporters he instructed Vice President Pence not to speak with Inslee and Whitmer, but Pence has done so anyway.

In January, Jen Reeder’s Labrador retriever Rio had a life-threatening bout of colitis. He pulled through after a weekend at Wheat Ridge Animal Hospital in Colorado, but when he started suffering from diarrhea on March 16, Reeder called the veterinarian.

The novel coronavirus crisis already had forced restaurants and bars to close, and people were being urged to stay home. But the vet said Rio needed to come in.

Only Rio, however. When Reeder arrived at the clinic, “a nice lady in a lab coat and mask came out and handed us a clipboard and a hot-pink, giant laminated card,” she said.

Soon, a masked technician came to collect Rio from the car. The dog jumped out and pulled his leash taut — creating just enough social distance so that the tech could put a different leash on him. He was delivered back to Reeder after the visit and, within a couple days, he was outside chasing squirrels.

As the virus spreads, veterinarians across the country are creating new systems for treating animals — both to protect clients and staff and to keep their businesses open. From curbside patient pickup and telemedicine to canceled elective surgeries and rationed masks and gowns, they are implementing their own version of improvisation and adaptation, just like doctors in human hospitals.

“We’re doing everything that we can to keep ourselves open,” said veterinarian Janisse Cailles, owner of Oldwick Animal Hospital in Whitehouse Station, N.J. “Dogs don’t recognize snowstorms, holidays or, as it turns out, pandemics. The pets expect us to be available, or certainly their owners do.”

U.S. becomes first country to record 100,000 confirmed coronavirus cases

The United States, which recorded its first confirmed case two months ago, now has more than 100,000 cases of the coronavirus, as reported by states’ health departments. The nation passed 10,000 cases on March 19 and on Thursday became the country with the most confirmed cases.

The United States surpassed China in confirmed coronavirus cases Thursday as the pandemic continued to slow in the country where it began,though Wuhan’s dwindling case counts have been called into question by independent reporting and treated with suspicion from experts.

As Chinese leaders tout their strict measures to contain the virus as effective, the coronavirus’s toll has only intensified elsewhere in the world. Earlier this month, health officials declared Europe the crisis’s new epicenter, and coronavirus-related deaths in the United States topped 1,000 on Thursday.

By Hannah Knowles

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March 27, 2020 at 8:13 PM EDT

Four unaccompanied immigrant children in federal custody have tested positive, court filing says

Four immigrant children in federal custody without their parents have tested positive for covid-19 in a single facility in New York state, according to a Justice Department court filing Friday.

The infected children are “in isolation,” according to the court filing, and are being monitored and cared for in compliance with Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.

U.S. officials did not disclose the minors’ ages and nationalities or the facility’s name in the filing. Unaccompanied minors are typically taken into custody after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without their parents and are held in ORR shelters until they can be placed with their parents or legal guardians.

The court filing was in response to immigration lawyers’ efforts to hasten the release of the unaccompanied minors, fearing the dormitory-style residences will spread the disease.

The four are among 18 minors tested for covid-19, according to the court filing. Eleven tested negative and three tests are pending.

Eight staff members and foster parents in five programs that care for minors in New York, Washington state and Texas also tested positive for the virus.

Jallyn Sualog, deputy director of ORR, said in a footnote in the records that three minors were unable to get tested “due to the particular community’s system for allocating tests among primary care providers,” and said officials were monitoring the situation to ensure they would be tested.

ORR is currently overseeing care for 3,374 minors, a sharp drop from the nearly 12,000 minors in custody this time last year.

ORR said it stopped placing minors in New York, California and Washington on March 9 because of the outbreak.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s family residential centers in Texas and Pennsylvania have had zero positive tests among residents or staff, the court records show. But two adult detainees in New Jersey and five detention employees in Colorado, New Jersey and Texas have tested positive, according to ICE’s website. Nineteen ICE employees who do not work in detention facilities have also tested positive.

By Maria Sacchetti

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March 27, 2020 at 8:00 PM EDT

Panera Bread and McLane Global vow to help deliver school meals

Two companies said Friday they will help to package and deliver food to children who normally depend on school for breakfast and lunch. Appearing at a White House briefing on the coronavirus, executives with Panera Bread and McLane Global said they will assist families who are having trouble picking up meals offered by their districts.

Distributing food has been one of the biggest challenges for many school districts that are closed because of the pandemic. Before schools closed, they served free lunches to more than 20 million students who qualified based on income. Feeding children has become part of the mission of public schools, even when class is out of session, with many opening cafeterias during the summertime and extended weather closures.

Many school districts are offering “grab and go” service, where families can pick up meals from a central location. But this can be difficult for children who live far away, for instance in rural areas.

McLane said the help will focus on rural America. Panera said it will begin work in Ohio and hopes to expand. Their efforts were announced by Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue.

“While our dedicated educators are dedicated to help fill our kids with knowledge, even when they’re not in a school site, USDA is working very hard to continue to fill their tummies,” Perdue said.

By Laura Meckler

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March 27, 2020 at 7:51 PM EDT

Fox parts ways with Trish Regan after she dismissed coronavirus as 'impeachment scam’

Fox Business anchor Trish Regan has departed the cable news network two weeks after she controversially dismissed concerns about the coronavirus during her show, calling it a “scam” to impeach President Trump.

The network said Friday that it “has parted ways” with Regan after it had pulled her prime-time show, citing scheduling of more breaking news coverage on the coronavirus crisis.

“We thank her for her contributions to the network over the years and wish her continued success in her future endeavors,” the network wrote in a statement distributed to The Washington Post. Regan’s on-air monologue earlier this month when she claimed “many in the liberal media” were using the pandemic “in an attempt to demonize and destroy” Trump ignited criticism.

“This is yet another attempt to impeach the president,” she had said of reporting on the virus.

In a statement of her own that the network distributed, Regan wrote that she’s “looking forward to this next chapter” in her career. “I have enjoyed my time at FOX and now intend to focus on my family during these troubled times,” she said.

By Meryl Kornfield

March 27, 2020 at 7:38 PM EDT

Trump sends mixed messages on how many ventilators he believes are needed

President Trump, who less than 24 hours earlier said states were requesting more equipment than they needed and that New York didn’t need 30,000 additional ventilators, announced that he was seeking the production of 100,000 new ventilators to deal with the coronavirus need.

“Within the next hundred days, we will either make or get in some form over 100,000 additional units. And I guess to put it, in other words, in the next 100 days, will receive over three times the number of ventilators made during a regular year in the United States,” he said.

Pressed on his comments to Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Thursday night that the need wasn’t as great as some predicted, Trump still agreed with that assessment.

“Well, I think there’s a very good chance we won’t need that many. And I think, frankly, there’s a great chance that we’re not going to need that many,” he said.

Asked how he’d determined that New York wouldn’t need as many ventilators as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) says it will, Trump responded, “I think their estimates are high. I hope they’re high. They could be extremely high.”

But he said that he’s having U.S. companies such as General Motors make them anyway and that any surplus of equipment can be sent to other countries that are friends to America.

“If we do not need them, that would be wonderful. We can help a lot of great people all over the world. We can help them live,” Trump said. “But I think I think [Cuomo’s] estimates are going to be very high. We’re going to see.”

By Colby Itkowitz

March 27, 2020 at 7:22 PM EDT

12 Chicago nurses test positive. Union alleges they had to work without protective equipment.

A dozen nurses working at the University of Illinois Hospital in Chicago have tested positive for the coronavirus, the Illinois Nursing Association announced in a statement Friday. INA claims the nurses have had to work without personal protective equipment in the hospital’s Covid Care Unit.

Nurses “do not know day to day if they will have masks, gowns, gloves or goggles for that shift,” INA Executive Director Alice Johnson said in the statement. “One nurse said their unit manager scolded them for wearing a mask in a room where a COVID19 positive patient was being intubated.”

Michael Zenn, chief executive of the University of Illinois Hospital and Clinics, said “a limited number” of these 12 nurses who tested positive for the coronavirus are believed to have been exposed in “the health care setting.” All providers who care for patients confirmed to have covid-19 or suspected of having covid-19 should wear PPE per hospital policy, Zenn said.

As of Friday, the hospital is planning to implement new guidance for all employees in their inpatient and outpatient units, asking them to wear masks daily, Zenn said.

“There are no circumstances in which we would ask our care providers to forgo PPE when caring for COVID-19 patients,” Zenn said. While the hospital is “very concerned about the availability of PPE and are doing all we can to responsibly conserve our supply,” they have not yet run out of any materials, he said.

Over the past several weeks, the nurses’ union has urged hospitals and clinics to provide PPE and safer working conditions for their nurses. They’ve criticized the American Hospital Association for not doing more to protect nurses by enforcing stronger workplace safety standards.

On March 16, INA released a statement demanding that “nurses receive personal protective equipment that is best suited to keep them safe. Now, as much as ever, our government must take every possible available measure to keep nurses safe and healthy.”

“These nurses served patients on the frontline of the fight to contain the coronavirus pandemic and risked their lives to make sure patients received proper care,” Johnson said. “We hoped their hospital and their government would protect them, but they failed.”

By Samantha Pell

March 27, 2020 at 7:09 PM EDT

Trump downplays challenges of keeping millions of students at home

With more than 50 million children stuck at home, their schools closed, trying to tackle online learning, President Trump has this advice: be proud of your country.

At a White House briefing, Trump was asked what he has to say to families and children stuck at home, he did not acknowledge the struggle underway for school districts and families to stand up remote education. Instead, he suggested children just wait it out.

“They have a duty to sit back, watch, behave, wash their hands, stay in the apartment with mom and dad,” he said. “Some of them are very happy not to go to school.”

He added: “We have literally had no problem,” though in fact districts have struggled to distribute food to poor families and to ensure that all students have computers and can connect to the Internet, and more.

“They should just sit back and be very proud of our country,” Trump said. “Ultimately we’re doing it for them.”

He then explained that young people are less likely to become seriously ill from the coronavirus than older people, which is true.

By Laura Meckler

March 27, 2020 at 6:27 PM EDT

People in addiction treatment are losing crucial support during the pandemic

With much of the country shut down amid calls for social distancing, thousands of people in opioid addiction treatment face weeks or months without the in-person meetings and support services long considered a lifeline in drug treatment and recovery.

From Seattle to New York, providers have been forced to cancel support groups or move them online. Inpatient treatment centers have limited family visits. Counselors have urged patients to check in by phone. Clinics that dispense medications to treat opioid addiction have reduced access to their waiting rooms, routing staff outside for curbside delivery.

Providers say they are determined to stay open, even with more limited services.

“The last thing that the health-care system needs right now are thousands of people in withdrawal or filling up the emergency rooms or going back on the streets and overdosing,” said Dan Reck, who oversees MATClinics, which has four drug treatment centers in Maryland. “This is unprecedented, and it’s not always clear what we should be doing.”

A New York hospital, desperate for ventilators, is treating two patients on a device intended for one

A New York hospital is putting two patients at a time on ventilators intended for one, a stopgap move that reflects the desperate shortage of lifesaving breathing devices during the coronavirus pandemic.

The procedure has never been studied in humans. It was briefly pressed into service in the emergency room of a Nevada hospital that ran short on ventilators during the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas and, according to an image on Twitter, in the past few days in Italy. An emergency doctor at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn kept four sheep alive for 12 hours in a 2008 experiment, using a jury-rigged ventilator. But another researcher who tested the idea on simulated mechanical lungs in a laboratory said it is too difficult to be practical, even under current circumstances.

“There’s no physician, including myself, who believes this is ideal. This is a doomsday idea,” said Lorenzo Paladino, an associate professor of emergency medicine at SUNY Downstate who performed the 2008 experiment. Rather than choose who can have a ventilator and who will be left to die, “I can do this and maybe keep everyone alive,” he said.

Doctors at Columbia University Irving Medical Center have two patients at a time on some ventilators. Jeremy Beitler, a pulmonary disease specialist at the hospital that is part of the New York-Presbyterian health system, declined to say how many patients are being treated this way.

He said the hospital began the effort in recent days, with the approval of several regulatory agencies and is “scaling up” in response to the shortage.

The ultimate number of additional patients who can be treated this way is unknown, Beitler said. But he cautioned that “this is not a panacea. It’s not going to double the number of ventilators.”

On Friday, President Trump signed an order that requires General Motors to begin manufacturing ventilators, using his authority under the Defense Production Act.

134 coronavirus patients died in New York in the past 24 hours. That’s almost one death every 10 minutes.

New York state reported 134 new coronavirus patient deaths in 24 hours, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) announced Friday, a jump from 100 deaths reported the previous day.

Friday’s number amounts to almost one death in the state every 10 minutes.

Even with the state’s death toll now at 519, which is more than a third of deaths nationally, Cuomo warned a possible apex in the state was still about 21 days away. About 44,000 people in New York have tested positive and about 6,000 are currently hospitalized.

Cuomo said the higher number of deaths was attributable to coronavirus patients who were hospitalized at least 20 days ago but haven’t been taken off ventilators.

“It’s bad news. It’s tragic news. It’s the worst news. But it is not unexpected news, either,” he said. “You could talk to any health care professional, they’ll tell you if you’re talking about a loved one, if they’re not off that ventilator in a relatively short period of time, it’s not a good sign.”

Javits Center in N.Y. will soon have beds for nearly 3,000 patients, official says

Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, who heads the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said Friday that the corps was continuing to establish medical facilities at Javits Center in New York and he expected that about 2,910 beds — each encased in a pod surrounded by partitions — would be built by Monday.

Patients who need care for medical problems that aren’t related to the coronavirus are expected to be cared for there.

Semonite said convention centers were suited to be such temporary care facilities because they had existing staff, the ability to subdivide areas and lots of individual power and water outlets.

He said the corps was racing to establish an adequate arrangement in a short period of time.

“I continue to stress to you — and I’ll do that every time I breathe — it’s got to be the good enough solution, and Javits is the good enough,” he said.

Semonite said the corps was working on three other hospitals in New York to treat covid-19 patients.

Across the country, Semonite said, the corps is looking at more than 100 sites to establish temporary medical care centers.

“We’ve assessed 81 of them, we’ve already cut contracts and we’re cutting contracts every night, to be able to get contractors to be able to come into the facilities,” he said.

The corps is also working on a facility to treat as many as 3,000 coronavirus patients at Chicago’s McCormick Place Convention Center.

By Missy Ryan

March 27, 2020 at 5:28 PM EDT

New York astrophysicist said she acquired 500,000 masks with help from Hong Kong democracy activists

A New York astrophysicist said she has acquired half a million surgical masks and wants to distribute them to New Jersey and New York hospitals as health-care workers scramble to get needed equipment to protect themselves from coronavirus infections.

Shirley Ho, a computational astrophysicist from the Flatiron Institute in New York, told The Washington Post that the masks were secured with the help of activists part of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, which she supports. In January, as the novel virus spread in Hong Kong, some activists worried that the government wouldn’t do enough to help people. So, they reached out through connections with suppliers and manufacturers to get face masks directly, Ho said.

As New York became the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States, Ho again mobilized a group of Hong Kong American activists to help medical workers desperate for supplies.

She said activists “put out feelers to connections internationally, from Eastern Europe to South America — connections through the Hong Kong pro-democracy activist organizations,” she said.

A shipment of 500,000 new masks was delivered Friday to a warehouse in New Jersey through a South American contact. Ho is working with a colleague David Spergel, another computational astrophysicist at the Flatiron Institute, and numerous friends to move the masks from the warehouse into storage until they can get them to hospitals.

“This all came together very quickly,” Ho said. “We found the masks on Monday, so we didn’t have a full list of hospitals we think are in need. We’re doing our due diligence to find out who is most in need.”

She’s working with colleagues and friends — including some medical workers — to get in touch with hospitals and to figure out what facilities need the supplies.

Ho said they plan to deliver 20,000 masks to Elmhurst Hospital in New York on Friday. She added some masks could go to other states as well.

“We’ve been in contact with a bunch of people running some of the ERs in North New Jersey and New York to get these to places that are most desperate as quickly as possible,” Spergel said.

Spergel said they raised about $20,000 in about an hour to pay for the masks and have set up a Go Fund Me page to collect donations. If they surpass fundraising goals, Ho said they will try to acquire additional masks.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that Turkey would suspend all international flights and restrict domestic travel, taking more drastic measures to halt the spread of the coronavirus after the infection rate surged by 50 percent or more for two days in a row.

Ninety-two people in Turkey have died and 5,698 have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to statistics released by the health ministry Friday. Turkey reported its first infection March 11. There were 2,069 new infections reported between Thursday and Friday — a 57 percent increase, according to Fahrettin Koca, Turkey’s health minister.

The government has released daily tallies reflecting the number of deaths, new infections and the number of tests that have been carried out. It has not provided detail about where in Turkey infections have been recorded. Koca, speaking to the media on Friday, suggested that those details were being withheld to prevent an exodus of people from trouble spots.

The surge of new cases in part reflected expanded testing by health officials, but also raised questions about the speed of the government’s response. Officials said they have moved decisively, closing schools, shuttering cafes, bars and concert halls and suspending congregational prayers. Elderly citizens have been told to stay at home.

But Turkey’s professional sports leagues continued operating after leagues in Europe and elsewhere had suspended play. International flights to New York, a coronavirus hotspot, continued until Thursday. The government has not imposed blanket curfews as other countries have.

Erdogan, in a televised address Friday, said Turkey was not caught “off-guard” and had attained a level of self-sufficiency that would allow it to provide citizens with food and medicine. Travel between cities would be subject to government approval he said, and “pandemic boards” would be established in all of Turkey’s 81 provinces.

Lawyers told the Supreme Court in a filing Friday that allowing termination of the program that protects undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children could mean the loss of nearly 30,000 health care workers during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Supreme Court held arguments on the Trump administration’s desire to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in November, and the court’s conservative justices seemed ready to find the president has such authority. The court could rule at any time.

But lawyers for DACA recipients said this would be an especially bad time for such an outcome.

The letter asked the justices to pay close attention to a brief in the case filed last year by the Association of American Medical Colleges and 32 allied organizations that “presciently identified” the current problem. The brief said the country is not prepared to “fill the loss that would result if DACA recipients were excluded from the health care workforce.”

Trump signs $2 trillion relief package

The president signed a massive stimulus package Friday in the Oval Office flanked by Republican members of Congress standing shoulder to shoulder behind him.

“I want to thank Republicans and Democrats for coming together, setting aside their differences and putting America first,” Trump said. No Democrats were present for the signing.

Trump reviewed the highlights of the bill and gave a preview of his 5:30 news briefing, where he said he’ll discuss in more detail his order that General Motors manufacture more ventilators.

After allowing others to speak, Trump opined on how “quickly life can change.”

“Twenty-two days ago, everything’s perfect, we’re looking forward,” Trump said. “And then one day we get hit with this thing that nobody ever heard of before. Nobody ever even heard of before. And now we’re fighting a different battle.”

But then Trump predicted that it would be over in a “fairly short period of time.”

After the signing, Trump handed pens out to the lawmakers and Cabinet members standing with him. None of them wore gloves.

By Colby Itkowitz

March 27, 2020 at 5:05 PM EDT

Many governors doubt their states will reopen by Easter, as Trump urged

Many governors across the country do not believe their states will reopen by Easter, contradicting President Trump’s desired timeline to have the country“opened up and raring to go” by the April 12 holiday amid the coronavirus pandemic.

In California, one of the hardest hit states, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said early April is sooner than any of his experts “believe is possible” for California to re-open businesses and resume operating normally. In his Tuesday news briefing, he said the next six to eight weeks “will be pivotal” to determine the next steps to make adjustments regarding restrictions.

New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) said in a Friday news conference that New York is preparing for a coronavirus apex in 21 days, which would be five days after Easter. Cuomo said schools in his state would still remain closed until at least April 15.

In Vermont, Gov. Phil Scott (R) issued a stay-at-home order for his state on Wednesday that will continue through April 15. Meanwhile in Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine (R) said based on the latest modeling from the Cleveland Clinic, the projected surge is expected to peak by mid-May. On the recommendations of the Cleveland Clinic, which estimates statewide hospital space needs to increase by up to three times, DeWine also ordered for the Ohio National Guard to start building additional space and facilities for hospital beds.

In Tennessee and Massachusetts, the states’ respective governors also stated their states would not be back to normal by Easter. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) directly addressed Trump’s goal Friday, stating that based on the information he is getting from public health officials, the state is “not going to be up and running by Easter, no.”

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) said Friday he does not “see any scenario where this doesn’t bleed meaningfully into May.” New Jersey’s stay-at-home order went into effect on March 21 and directs all residents to stay at home “until further notice.”

By Samantha Pell

March 27, 2020 at 5:02 PM EDT

Space Force, a command of one, can’t double in size

The coronavirus pandemic has stalled the Pentagon’s newest combatant command from growing — from one member to two.

After Towberman is sworn in, the next 64 official members will be Air Force Academy cadets who will receive their commissions in May, Raymond said. That graduation is on schedule despite the coronavirus outbreak, he said, but an exercise planned for April was canceled.

Raymond’s airmen are taking precautions to maintain critical missions, he said, such as overseeing networks of GPS satellites. Airmen are either working from home or maintaining social distance from one another when telework is not possible.

Some Uber drivers, Airbnb hosts and other gig-economy workers sidelined as a result of the coronavirus outbreak could soon receive unemployment checks from the government, part of an effort by Congress to ease the wide-ranging hardships wrought by a deadly global pandemic.

The expansion to the country’s social-safety net is a critical component of the roughly $2 trillion coronavirus aid package lawmakers that lawmakers finalized Friday. Once it is signed by Trump, it would put hundreds of dollars each week in the pockets of eligible Americans who no longer can transport passengers, deliver meals or rent out their homes as a primary source of income because they have been ordered to stay indoors.

Had Congress not acted, some workers for on-demand companies would have been unable to obtain such aid: That’s because these laborers — in the eyes of both the law and the Silicon Valley tech giants that they serve — are not treated the same as traditional full-time employees and afforded similar help when they’re facing financial duress.

But their early celebrations might be short lived: Some said they fear it could take too long, or prove too onerous, to access new jobless benefits. Others questioned the very nature of the program, which would see the federal government, not the likes of Airbnb, Uber and Lyft, paying for the weekly sums to the workers upon whom many tech platforms rely most.

President Trump on Friday compelled General Motors to manufacture ventilators to help handle the surge of coronavirus patients, using his power under the Defense Production Act.

Trump announced that he had signed a presidential memorandum requiring the company to “accept, perform and prioritize” federal government contracts for production of the much-needed medical equipment shortly before signing a $2 trillion stimulus package to prop up the economy during this public health crisis.

“Our negotiations with GM regarding its ability to supply ventilators have been productive, but our fight against the virus is too urgent to allow the give-and-take of the contracting process to continue to run its normal course,” Trump said in a statement. “GM was wasting time. Today’s action will help ensure the quick production of ventilators that will save American lives.”

Trump hinted earlier in the day via tweets that this might be coming, expressing frustration with the company and seeming to order GM to start making the ventilators, but he did not explicitly state that he was invoking the Korean War-era law.

GM said in a statement that the company has been working along with medical device firm Ventec Life Systems and that its suppliers “have been working around the clock for weeks to meet this urgent need.”

In an earlier statement issued Friday, the company said that it will build ventilators at its Kokomo, Ind., manufacturing plant “with FDA-cleared ventilators scheduled to ship as soon as next month.” The company said it would also start making surgical masks at its Warren, Mich., facility next week and ramp up to 50,000 masks per day within two weeks.

Ventec Life Systems chief executive Chris Kiple said in an NBC interview that its ventilator partnership with GM was moving forward before Trump invoked the Defense Production Act and that the automaker’s commitment has “been overwhelming."

Two more members of Congress test positive for coronavirus

Reps. Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.) and Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) have tested positive for the coronavirus, making them the fourth and fifth member of Congress to contract the virus.

Cunningham said he had felt fine but grew concerned when he lost his sense of smell and taste, symptoms associated with the virus, reported the Post and Courier.

Cunningham was already in self-quarantine for more than a week because he had learned from the House physician that he was in contact with another member — Rep. Ben McAdams (D-Utah) — who was infected.

The congressman held a Facebook Live event Thursday where he gave advice and took questions about juggling working from home with small children. On Monday, he plans to hold a tele-town hall about the coronavirus relief bill that just passed in the House.

Kelly said in a statement that he began experiencing flu-like symptoms earlier in the week, and his doctor ordered a covid-19 test. The results came back positive Friday afternoon.

The other lawmakers who have tested positive are Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.). Many others are in self quarantine because of symptoms or contact with an infected person.

Florida says travelers from Louisiana must self-isolate

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expanding his restrictions on travelers and tourists entering the state from areas of the country hardest hit by the virus.

At a news briefing Friday, he said he was adding Louisiana to an earlier executive order that requires air travelers from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to self-isolate for two weeks upon arrival.

Travelers from nearby Louisiana, which is also experiencing an outbreak, will be required to isolate, including those traveling by car. Since his earlier order, 3,400 travelers from the New York area have been screened in Florida, and there has been a “dramatic reduction in air traffic,” DeSantis (R) said.

The move is part of a broader attempt to control the spread of the infection at a time when spring-breakers are descending. DeSantis also announced a two-week ban on new vacation rentals, though it was not immediately clear how state officials planned to enforce that. He said people currently in vacation rentals can finish out their stay.

Also Friday, the Overseas Highway into the Florida Keys was blocked off to visitors, an acknowledgment that tourism — the lifeblood of the islands — will have to be temporarily sacrificed.

“It breaks my heart,” said Elizabeth Moscynski, president of the Key Largo Chamber of Commerce. “It’s so tough, because we’re such a friendly place. Now we have to tell people they can’t come down.”

Officers from several agencies on Friday morning began stopping all vehicles trying to enter the Keys either on the Overseas Highway or on a more remote road called Card Sound Road.

A week ago, the county told tourists to leave and closed all hotels and short-term rentals. The county has had 14 reported cases of coronavirus and no deaths.

“We have to do it to flatten the curve,” Moscynski said. “Once this clears up, we’ll be back to ‘come as you are.’ For now, we’ve got to be proactive.”

By Lori Rozsa and Katie Mettler

March 27, 2020 at 3:44 PM EDT

Most airports in China’s Hubei province, original epicenter of outbreak, set to reopen Sunday, Chinese media reports

Airports are set to reopen Sunday in China’s Hubei province, where the coronavirus outbreak was first recorded late last year, as the number of locally transmitted cases in mainland China dramatically decreased in recent weeks.

On Friday, the Communist Party-linked Global Times, an English-language news outlet, tweeted that airports across the province will resume flights Sunday, except in Wuhan, the original epicenter of the outbreak.

The international airport in Wuhan will resume regular services April 8, the Global Times reported. The declaration that flights are scheduled to resume comes shortly after China announced stringent new restrictions on foreigners entering the country, barring even foreigners with valid visas and residence permits. Chinese officials have repeatedly expressed concern that most new cases in the country have been recorded in people who recently returned from abroad, as the outbreak appears to slow in mainland China but continues to spread widely elsewhere.

Even as certain aspects of daily life return to somewhat normal in parts of China, routines have been upended across much of Europe and the United States in recent weeks, as some governments have imposed mandatory lockdowns and others are shuttering businesses to encourage widespread social distancing.

By Siobhán O'Grady

March 27, 2020 at 3:17 PM EDT

Zoos are closed because of coronavirus, but the animals still need care

Ginger Sturgeon was walking along the pathways of Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium recently when she heard a chorus of what sounded like honking, out-of-tune violins.

With around half of the zoo’s employees working remotely and the public barred from entry, Sturgeon was the lone audience member for this discordant symphony.

“The flamingos just started calling and actually ran over to the fence to greet me. They’re a very gregarious species,” said Sturgeon, director of animal health for the Pennsylvania facility. “They were just really excited to see somebody.”

Across the country, zoos and aquariums have closed to the public amid widespread efforts to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus. The shutdowns have allowed for delightful videos of penguins marching around empty parks, but they haven’t stopped work at the facilities.

Zoos house hundreds of thousands of captive animals that rely on people for their food and care — and that means employees like Sturgeon are still reporting for duty each day. But that work now looks vastly different.

Nonessential staff is at home, and the skeleton staff that remains must work while also practicing social distancing. Some facilities are hitting the pause button on non-emergency procedures, such as trimming donkeys’ hoofs. Keepers are more often wearing masks. Nutritionists are working to secure rare foods for animals with limited diets.

Sweden opts for looser coronavirus restrictions, as much of Europe remains on lockdown

Across Europe, governments have implemented strict policies to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, ordering people to stay inside, closing schools and limiting public transportation. But in Sweden, which has more than 3,000 confirmed cases, the government has refrained from imposing stringent measures.

“The fact that there’s no legislation in place indicates a sort of trust in its citizens to have a sense of responsibility,” said Christian Christensen, a professor of media studies at Stockholm University.

Given the speed with which the virus has spread in other European countries, it remains unclear how much a call for individual responsibility can achieve, as opposed to broad social control measures.

On Friday, the country banned public gatherings of more than 50 people, starting Sunday. An entry ban on foreign citizens has been in place for more than a week, universities and high schools have closed their campuses, and the government has recommended social distancing practices, as well as reduced contact with the older population.

But, unlike much of Europe, Sweden’s restaurants, bars and shops remain open, and people are not required to stay home.

Stockholm’s streets and cafes are much less crowded than usual, but not everyone has been willing to change their behavior. Before the gathering ban was imposed, ski resorts were holding after-parties packed with hundreds of people — though some resorts have already decided to close their pubs.

Neighboring Denmark and Norway, meanwhile, have implemented lockdowns set to last well into April.

“I don’t see that the impact in other Nordic countries is that different,” said Anders Nordstrom, the ambassador for global health at the Swedish Foreign Ministry. “We have the same kind of measures that you have in other countries. But mostly they have been put in place in a kind of different way.”

By Ruby Mellen

March 27, 2020 at 3:00 PM EDT

Instacart’s workers plan to strike. A lifeline of groceries could be caught in the middle.

Gig workers for the grocery delivery app Instacart are planning an emergency strike starting Monday to protest the company’s lack of worker protection during the covid-19 pandemic, a move that is likely to cause waves in the already-disrupted grocery space.

Instacart has become a lifeline for some consumers during the outbreak as more states order residents to shelter in place. Gig workers have become akin to first responders for some people during the crisis, but they perform the work without meaningful health benefits or pay protection. Instacart hasn’t provided workers with any hand sanitizer or protection, Vanessa Bain, a veteran shopper for Instacart who helped organize the strike, told The Washington Post.

“It’s so scary to be in a grocery store right now, and so scary to be around swarms and mobs of people,” she said. “I would convey to customers that we are also doing this out of interest in protecting them.”

The strike will continue until Instacart, which has raised $1.95 billion in venture capital, according to Pitchbook, agrees to the terms, according to a Medium post outlining their terms, which include an additional $5 per order in hazard pay.

Trump wishes Johnson a speedy recovery after he tests positive for the coronavirus

Trump spoke by phone Friday with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and wished him well hours after Johnson announced he had tested positive for the coronavirus, a White House spokesman said.

“The President thanked the Prime Minister for his close friendship and wished him a speedy recovery,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere tweeted.

Deere said Trump and Johnson also agreed to “collaborate closely with … international partners, to defeat the coronavirus pandemic and boost the global economy."

“The two leaders also expressed optimism that the United States and the United Kingdom would emerge stronger than ever,” Deere added.

By John Wagner

March 27, 2020 at 2:00 PM EDT

Coronavirus isolation brings grave new hardships for the world’s poor

HONG KONG — For some, sheltering in place and social distancing mean home workouts in front of large-screen smart televisions, cooking up a storm with groceries ordered online and more time in their backyards.

Elsewhere, it means confining a family of four in a 110-square-foot space while children struggle with e-learning on a poor Internet connection. It means a devastating loss of income for families who now forage through trash, and crippling loneliness for those already on society’s fringes.

Barriers have risen around the world as governments sacrifice their economies and free mobility to stave off a pandemic that has already killed 25,000 people. But as these measures disproportionately affect the poor, doing one’s part to fight the coronavirus can mean dramatically different adjustments. Some are struggling to afford their next meal.

The Washington Post spoke to families and individuals in two cities with severe inequality — Hong Kong and Manila — to understand their struggle. Hong Kong in late January asked businesses and schools to shut, forcing millions into shoebox-like living quarters for two months. A new policy limiting opening hours at McDonald’s restaurants has also left homeless people who sleep at 24-hour outlets scrambling for an alternative.

In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has enforced a month-long lockdown, shuttering Manila and its surrounding regions, grounding 60 million residents. Many are contract workers in sectors such as sales and construction, with little job security, and now face severe economic loss.

ROME — In the middle of a darkened empty St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis on Friday offered an extraordinary prayer as the world faces the coronavirus pandemic that has killed thousands and upended lives around the world.

“Do not leave us at the mercy of the storm,” Francis said, offering a prayer that is normally reserved only for Christmas and Easter.

The images of the event were among the most memorable in the modern history of the Catholic Church — Francis, walking without an umbrella in a steady rain, toward a covered podium in the middle of the square. Normally, he is thronged by crowds. This time, there were only a few other Vatican officials around, and the square was cast in a dark-blue light.

“Thick darkness has gathered over our squares, our streets and our cities,” Francis said. “It has taken over our lives, filling everything with a deafening silence and a distressing void.”

Francis said life in this moment is being sustained by ordinary people: “doctors, nurses, supermarket employees, cleaners, caregivers, providers of transport, law and order forces, volunteers, priests, religious men and women.”

After speaking, Francis walked slowly toward St. Peter’s Basilica and prayed in front of a crucifix that was used in Rome during the time of the plague.

Francis appeared slightly out of breath at the beginning of his remarks. The Vatican had encouraged faithful to follow along online, and the event was live-streamed on the Holy See’s YouTube channel.

For much of the country, Friday marks the end of the first week of the mass and involuntary move to online education. Early evidence suggests students, teachers and parents are having vastly different experiences, with existing gaps in resources exacerbated and new divides opening, according to more than 40 interviews and hundreds of email exchanges with parents, teachers, administrators and students.

Worst off are families struggling to meet basic needs and in homes where students can’t connect to the Internet. High-poverty districts’ first priority often was setting up meal distribution for children who rely on school for breakfast and lunch, with learning sometimes a secondary concern.

Also hard hit: children with disabilities, those who struggle with technology, and parents who are overwhelmed trying to do their own jobs from home while learning to become amateur teachers. Some teachers report dozens of emails from parents simply trying to log on.

Yet other school systems, including some large, diverse districts, appear to be finding success. That includes schools that invested in technology, that gave every student their own tablet or computer, and where parents are well positioned to help.

The House passed a massive $2.2 trillion stimulus bill on a voice vote after going to extraordinary lengths to overcome a procedural move by a single Republican that threatened to delay sending the bill to Trump for his signature.

Responding to the insistence by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) that the vote take place with a quorum present — more than half of the 430 sitting members — lawmakers streamed into the chamber, with some taking places in the galleries usually reserved for the public, to conform to social distancing guidelines for the coronavirus.

The fear in the room could be seen in the minutes ahead of the vote as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and others spoke toward the close of the debate. Several members wore surgical gloves. Some held their hand over their face as they passed other lawmakers or staffers.

Senior aides walked around the room prepping lawmakers for the tricky vote, waving their arms in a downward motion, reminding those in the gallery above to stay seated.

After the voice vote, Massie asked for a recorded vote and questioned whether a quorum was present. “Mr. Speaker, I came here to make sure our republic doesn’t die by unanimous consent in an empty chamber, and I request a recorded vote,” he said.

Rep. Anthony G. Brown (D-Md.), who was presiding, ruled that there was in fact a quorum and that a recorded vote was not necessary to ensure they had at least 216 House members present. Senior aides in both parties did the least technological count possible — pacing the room and counting off in their heads how many were on hand. As Pelosi spoke, Massie stood in the center aisle, getting ready to demand a vote. He just stared at his phone, talking to no one.

The quicker members arrived, “the shorter my remarks will be,” Pelosi said, asking members to come to the floor and the gallery above to establish the quorum.

Republicans laughed and gave a rare round of applause for the Democratic speaker. Pelosi prolonged the debate to allow senior aides to do a final head count. She said she would talk until they knew they had the numbers. Keith Stern, her floor director, handed her a note. Then she quickly finished her remarks, knowing they had a quorum.

By John Wagner and Paul Kane

March 27, 2020 at 1:44 PM EDT

France extends lockdown by at least two more weeks

PARIS — France’s national lockdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus will extend until at least April 15, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe announced Friday.

The nation became the latest European country to extend an initially shorter lockdown period as the number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus continued to rise. Italy, the hardest-hit European country, was the first to extend its lockdown, and Spain announced Thursday it would do the same, extending its own emergency measures until April 12.

France has been on a complete lockdown since March 17, and authorities have struggled to enforce the terms of the period, during which residents are only permitted to leave their homes for essential shopping, doctor visits and brief daily exercise.

All who leave their homes must carry a time-stamped “attestation” form that certifies the reason for their walk, at the penalty of a €135 (about $150) fine, which can rise sharply for repeat offenders.

France’s lockdown period has already taken a significant economic toll. Insee, the country’s national statistics agency, announced Thursday that economic activity had plummeted by approximately 35 percent because of the coronavirus-related shutdown.

As it has across Europe, the lockdown period has upended all aspects of normal life in France, including certain aspects of law and order. A key concern, including for France’s justice minister, has been minimizing the risk of widespread coronavirus transmission, both among prisoners crowded in cells and among guards who work in proximity.

On Thursday, L’Alsace — a local newspaper for the region of eastern France badly hit by the virus outbreak — reported that two men who had been jailed for suspected involvement with the December 2018 attack on a Strasbourg Christmas market were released from prison because of the coronavirus epidemic.

By James McAuley

March 27, 2020 at 1:44 PM EDT

Cuomo says New York preparing for virus apex in 21 days

New York officials are working to create new temporary hospitals and increase bed capacity in anticipation of an apex three weeks from now, New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) said Friday at a news conference.

The good news, Cuomo said, is that the rate of increase is slowing. But the number of cases are still climbing.

Some 44,000 New Yorkers had tested positive as of Friday, and 519 had died — an increase of 134 since Thursday.

Projections show that in 21 days, hospitals in the state could experience a crush of patients who need to be admitted or put on ventilators. Hospitals have been asked to expand their available beds by 50 to 100 percent as soon as possible, Cuomo said.

People with a respiratory illness on a vent usually need it for two to four days, Cuomo said. But coronavirus patients are staying on them for up to 20 days. The longer someone spends on a ventilator, the less likely they can come off and survive.

There are already four FEMA hospitals being built in the state, including one that will open Monday at the Javits Center in Manhattan. The governor said he has asked the White House to create 4,000 more beds across four newly identified temporary sites in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx.

Cuomo said schools in the state will remain closed until April 15.

The governor closed his briefing by addressing members of the New York National Guard in the audience.

“You are living a moment in history. This is going to be one of those moments they are going to write about and talk about for generations,” Cuomo said. “This is going to be a moment that changes this nation. This is going to be a moment that forges character."

By Katie Mettler

March 27, 2020 at 1:39 PM EDT

Four dead on Zaandam cruise ship, where 138 people are sick

Four passengers have died on the Zaandam cruise ship, where people started reporting flu-like symptoms over the weekend, Holland America Line said Friday.

So far, two people on the ship have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. According to the company, 138 people, of more than 1,800 on the ship, are sick. Passengers who are not ill are being transferred to another vessel.

Lisa Bodley said her brother, Andy Vinson, called her Friday morning to tell her that the captain had announced the deaths.

“They’re feeling this sense of: They’re not getting the help, the attention,” she said of passengers on board.

The operator has been trying to find a port to let its passengers disembark, but officials in Chile denied a request to let passengers off in Punta Arenas on March 16. The last time anyone had been off the Zaandam was March 14 in the same city. Passengers have been confined to their rooms since Sunday.

The vessel was near the Panama Canal on Friday. Holland America was working to get permission to transit the waterway and head to Fort Lauderdale, but it’s not clear if it will be allowed to dock there.

Top Democratic consultant Larry Rasky had coronavirus at time of death, family says

Larry Rasky, a well-known Boston-based Democratic consultant who for decades worked closely with Joe Biden and who passed away Sunday, tested positive for the coronavirus, according to results his family received after his death.

Rasky, who was 69, was an adviser to a number of top Democrats over his decades-long career, including John F. Kerry, Jimmy Carter and Edward J. Markey.

“On Thursday night, we learned that my dad, Larry Rasky, tested positive for COVID-19,” Rasky’s son, Will, said in a statement released Friday. “My dad had other underlying health conditions that medical professionals urge us to keep in mind. Our family, Larry’s colleagues, and others had already taken precautions in advance of learning the result, and we continue to follow all public health guidance.”

Rasky worked on former vice president Biden’s last two presidential campaigns, in 1988 and 2008, and in the fall helped set up a super PAC supporting Biden in his presidential bid. Because he was operating independently from Biden’s campaign, it does not appear that he was in recent physical contact with Biden.

“He gave me confidence,” Biden added, referring to earlier political junctures. “No matter how down I was going into something, that ridiculous laugh of his would always make a difference. He always knew when to kid and when not to kid.”

Rasky’s family urged those who have been in recent contact with him to self-isolate, and his son reflected on the difficulty of the timing.

“Not being able to gather with family and friends has made mourning Larry’s death all the more difficult, so the impact of the pandemic was already felt,” he said in the statement. “That said, Larry’s spirit and legacy have kept us all tied together.”

Rasky had developed some of the symptoms earlier in the month, and he had a typically pugnacious response to President Trump and his response to the global pandemic.

“COVID-19. You can’t bomb it. You can’t yell at it. You can’t ignore it. You can’t bully it,” he wrote on Twitter. “You can’t really blame anyone for it. The only thing you can do is solve the problem. That’s one card #DonaldTrump doesn’t have in his deck of magic cards.”

It would be one of Rasky’s last tweets. Nine days later, he died of the virus.

By Matt Viser

March 27, 2020 at 12:59 PM EDT

Shortage of equipment one of most ‘urgent threats’ worldwide, WHO says

The worldwide shortage of personal protective equipment for health-care workers is “one of the most urgent threats to our collective ability to save lives,” World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday.

Masks, gloves and face shields must be produced and distributed at larger scales, Tedros said at a news conference.

The organization has so far shipped 2 million items to 74 countries, he said, with plans to send similar amounts to dozens of others. But much more is needed, Tedros stressed.

“When health workers are at risk, we are all at risk,” he said.

The worldwide toll has reached more than half a million infected, Tedros said, with more than 20,000 deaths.

Hospitals in the United States have sounded alarms over shortages of equipment that have forced them to reuse masks and gloves that otherwise should be discarded.

Tedros and other officials also addressed questions about deaths and severe illnesses among younger people.

Early warnings of the virus focused on older people with underlying conditions, but rashes of deaths and infections among people younger than 55 have prompted officials to warn that anyone is at risk.

“Young people are not invincible,” Maria Van Kerkhove, a WHO infectious disease epidemiologist, said at the conference.

SEATTLE — Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said Amazon is falling short in its efforts to protect its warehouse workers, as the coronavirus has spread to employees who work in at least 14 of the company’s facilities.

While Amazon has taken some steps to improve worker safety, such as offering warehouse workers hazard pay and insisting on social-distancing guidelines, Booker said Friday it was not enough. He wants the company to temporarily close warehouses where workers test positive, as well as cover testing and suspend write-ups of workers who are not working quickly enough.

“The safety and well-being of Amazon’s employees must be paramount, and given the nature and scope of Amazon’s business, the safety and well-being of the millions of Americans who are Amazon customers are also at stake,” Booker spokeswoman Kristin Lynch said in an emailed statement.

Brown echoed the sentiment in his own statement.

The senators, along with Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), sent Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos a letter last week expressing concern that the company isn’t doing enough to protect its warehouse workers. (Bezos also owns The Washington Post.)

Amazon’s reply, sent by Brian Huseman, vice president of public policy, called employees “heroes” and said the company now more regularly cleans facilities, has eliminated meetings where groups of workers congregate and has staggered start and break times to aid social distancing, among other measures.

Separately, Amazon acknowledged that workers have tested positive for the coronavirus at its facilities in Houston; Edison, N.J.; Romulus, Mich.; and Shelby Township, Mich. Those are in addition to 10 other facilities it acknowledged earlier this week where workers have tested positive.

An additional 919 people died of the coronavirus in Italy in the past day, Italian officials said Friday, marking the world’s highest one-day jump in deaths in a single country since the outbreak began late last year.

The dramatic uptick in deaths far surpasses Italy’s earlier highest daily death toll of 793, which was announced Saturday.

At a news conference announcing the latest numbers Friday, officials also confirmed an additional 50 deaths that had been omitted from the previous day’s death toll due to an error.

The new data brings the country’s total death toll to 9,134 dead since February.

Spain halts layoffs amid coronavirus outbreak

Spain’s government approved a new measure Friday temporarily restricting companies from laying off employees for economic reasons or due to production slowdowns during the coronavirus crisis.

“We aren’t going to leave anyone behind,” Labor Minister Yolanda Díaz said. “First of all, no one can take advantage of this health crisis to fire. Firing is forbidden. It is not necessary to fire anyone.”

The announcement came a day after Spain extended its national state of emergency for two weeks and the number of confirmed coronavirus cases climbed to 64,059, with 4,858 deaths.

Díaz said companies would still be able to temporarily suspend employment and that the government would review individually each suspension to detect fraud. She said the government sees the adjustment to the labor market as temporary.

After announcing a nationwide lockdown March 13, Spain’s government approved a raft of measures to help small- and medium-sized businesses and preserve employment.

“Everyone is going to collect their unemployment benefits,” Díaz said Friday. “And with the simplified model we are going to pay the benefits immediately, and then each worker can later apply for the per child supplement.”

By Pamela Rolfe

March 27, 2020 at 12:33 PM EDT

Kabul to be put on lockdown as Afghanistan braces for coronavirus spread

KABUL — The Afghan government is putting the country’s capital, Kabul, on lockdown starting Saturday amid fears the coronavirus is spreading through the country.

The measures announced in a news conference Friday are the most severe formal restrictions on movement implemented in the capital, despite decades of conflict there.

The lockdown will go into effect Saturday at 6 a.m. local time and last three weeks, closing most businesses and government offices and severely restricting civilian movement in the sprawling congested city estimated to be home to more than 6 million people.

Residents will only be allowed to leave their homes to purchase groceries and seek medical attention. The only sectors that will continue to function normally are the country’s security forces and health-care employees.

In a statement shortly after the announcement from the governor of Kabul, the acting interior minister and the health minister, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani called on Kabul residents to heed the measures.

“Since this risk is increasing, at this stage we have to take serious measures because so far no vaccine or medicines have been produced to eradicate this virus,” Ghani said at an emergency cabinet meeting called to address the issue Friday.

Acting interior minister Massoud Andarabi also urged residents to cooperate and said the police will “act strongly” against those who “violate” the curfew.

Afghanistan has confirmed 96 coronavirus infections and three deaths. However, the country has carried out limited testing, and officials fear the numbers could be much higher. Afghanistan’s weak health-care system makes the nation particularly vulnerable to outbreaks of disease.

Many fear the virus has already spread across the country from neighboring Iran. Tens of thousands of Afghans have returned from Iran in recent weeks as that country struggles to contain the virus. The Afghan government has taken few measures to restrict the travel of recent returnees.

By Sharif Hassan and Sayed Salahuddin

March 27, 2020 at 12:16 PM EDT

Trump raises prospect of ordering GM to manufacture ventilators

Trump in tweets Friday seemingly threatened to order — or perhaps did order — General Motors to start making ventilators to help combat the coronavirus outbreak.

It was not immediately clear whether Trump was invoking his powers under the Defense Production Act to compel the company to action after he expressed frustration over GM’s unwillingness to follow through on what he characterized as a voluntary pledge.

“As usual with ‘this’ General Motors, things just never seem to work out,” Trump said. “They said they were going to give us 40,000 much needed Ventilators, ‘very quickly’. Now they are saying it will only be 6000, in late April, and they want top dollar.”

Coronavirus is wreaking havoc on scientific field work

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to upend life around the world, scientific research is beginning to suffer. Over the past several weeks, major Earth science field campaigns, some of them years in the making, have been called off or postponed indefinitely.

Earlier this month, several NASA-led airborne campaigns, including flights to survey land losses in the Mississippi River delta and hurricane recovery in Puerto Rico, were suspended. So, too, were scientific cruises that use vessels in the U.S. Academic Research Fleet.

And with all passenger flights in and out of Greenland grounded late last week in an effort to prevent the coronavirus from spreading to the icy island, many Arctic scientists’ summer field plans are now in limbo. Some campaigns, including a complex international drilling project that is collecting deep ice cores from East Greenland, have already been canceled for the year.

In many cases, scientists are planning to reschedule their work, although results will be delayed and money already spent toward this year’s field season will be lost.

For the less fortunate projects — those that are time sensitive, or took years of careful logistical coordination across many institutions — scientists will have to lower their expectations in terms of what can be accomplished.

Several lawmakers who were in self-quarantine are back in D.C. for relief package vote

At least four House members who had placed themselves in self-quarantine this month because they had come into contact with a person infected by the coronavirus are now out of isolation and on the House floor to vote for the $2 trillion stimulus bill.

Among those who returned to work:

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) stayed home after a former staffer, attorney Daniel Goldman, who led questioning for the Democrats during the impeachment hearings, revealed on March 15 that he had tested positive for the virus.

Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) also announced on March 15 that he would work remotely because he had been in contact with a staffer who had the virus.

Also spotted on Capitol Hill was Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), the assistant House speaker, who said on March 16 that he would quarantine himself after realizing he had interacted with someone who later tested positive. Lujan traveled to vote after his quarantine, which started from the date of the interaction, had ended.

Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) was back in D.C. after he announced on March 17 that he had held a meeting with a constituent who had been infected.

In related news, Rep. Katie Porter (D-Mich.), who placed herself in quarantine after experiencing flu-like symptoms, announced that she has tested negative for the coronavirus but remains too ill to return to Washington for the vote.

NEW ORLEANS — More than a million dancing, singing, bead-catching celebrants packed the streets of the French Quarter and other venues across this city in the weeks leading up to the sprawling open-air party that is Mardi Gras.

There was little worry during the February festivities about the new virus that had infected a few dozen people in other parts of the country.

Thirteen days later, on March 9, Louisiana reported its first case of covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Then came another, and another. Clusters broke out in several nursing homes. The cases popping up across the state were not easily linked to each other, meaning that a galloping community spread was already underway.

A terrible realization began to dawn on residents and political leaders: The famous bonhomie of the world’s biggest free party may have helped supercharge one of the most rapid spreads of the coronavirus, which is threatening to overwhelm Louisiana’s health-care system and potentially make the state one of the next epicenters.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell (D) on Friday defended her decision to move forward with Mardi Gras because no federal official had warned her not to.

“No red flags were given,” she told CNN. “If we were given clear direction, we would not have had Mardi Gras, and I would’ve been the leader to cancel it.”

"No red flags were given" by the federal government. - New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell on why the city moved forward with Mardi Gras celebrations. "If we were given clear direction we would not have had Mardi Gras and I would've been the leader to cancel it." pic.twitter.com/pAsEC5lMkz

The city works closely with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to keep the event safe, Cantrell said, and no one from those agencies or others advised her that the festival was a risk.

In addition to Mardi Gras, there are other possible factors for the spread in New Orleans, such as the city’s robust cruise and convention industries, officials have said.

By Ariana Eunjung Cha and Alex Horton

March 27, 2020 at 11:47 AM EDT

With virus cases soaring, closed hospitals become a precious source of beds

Across the country, governors from Maryland to New Jersey to California are turning to shuttered hospitals as a new weapon against the coronavirus.

The moves are essentially reversing — at least temporarily — a national wave of closures that cut the number of hospitals in major cities nearly in half over the past five decades. The dramatic drop in hospital beds, usually carried out in the name of saving money and concentrating services in bigger, more advanced facilities, has left the country ill-prepared for a pandemic, experts say.

Closed years ago for lack of use, or because they were hemorrhaging money or fell into bankruptcy, dusty and outdated hospitals offer critically needed space for new beds. But staffing, cleaning and modernizing them remain a challenge.

Medical supply chaos forcing hospitals to work with unverified middlemen to get lifesaving equipment

Governors and local health officials have pleaded for the federal government to shore up dwindling hospital stockpiles by invoking the Defense Production Act, which would compel American companies to make critical medical supplies. President Trump has refused, saying Thursday night, “I just haven’t had to use it.”

But without clear federal coordination, hospitals and public health officials say they’ve become so desperate for surgical masks, isolation gowns, ventilators and protective equipment that they’re now working with unverified cold-callers and for-profit middlemen promising to get them the lifesaving supplies.

Shortages have led health systems, states and the federal government to compete against one another for medical resources, which have skyrocketed in price. Hospital purchasing managers and state emergency management officers said masks that used to cost pennies now cost several dollars a piece.

Companies and federal investigators have warned against counterfeit masks and scams from “pandemic profiteers.” But some hospitals say they have no other choice.

John Bonamo, the chief medical and quality officer for RWJBarnabas Health, New Jersey’s biggest health-care network, said the hospitals are paying cash upfront for equipment sold for 50 times the usual price.

They also are being forced to vet a flood of proposals and deal with potential fraud. A recent delivery of 500,000 surgical masks from a Chinese supplier turned out to be medically useless. They appeared to be designed for a nail salon.

“We’re burning through cash, but there’s no other option,” Bonamo said. “The rules as we know them don’t exist anymore.”

The coronavirus mea culpas from people who once thought it was no big deal

Speaking to a roomful of senior citizens March 13, the same day President Trump declared a national emergency, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) said they should “go forth” with their daily activities and forget about staying inside. He called the coronavirus “the beer virus” — “how do you like that?” — and said the pandemic was “blown out of proportion,” the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman reported at the time.

Now, much like the celebrities and viral spring breakers who suggested that the pandemic was no big deal, the 86-year-old congressman has changed his tune. The impact of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, is “very real, growing” and reshaping our daily lives, he said in a video message Thursday.

“Weeks ago, I did not truly grasp the severity of this crisis,” Young said, while urging everyone to stay home. “But clearly we are in the midst of an urgent public health emergency.”

Young is just one of numerous public figures who, in recent days, have walked back brazen comments downplaying the pandemic as the crisis has grown increasingly dire across the United States.

Two weeks ago, a long time on a pandemic’s watch, about 1,600 cases of covid-19 were reported across the country. Beaches were still packed, and bars were still serving. Now, as the United States surpasses every nation, including China and Italy, in coronavirus infections, with more than 85,000 cases, apologies for unpopular hot takes and bad social-distancing behavior are pouring in.

People are turning to Facebook during the global pandemic, with everyone from the pope to health agencies using the service to live-stream.

The company says the number of phone calls over WhatsApp and Messenger are double what they were a year ago in localities most impacted by the virus, including the United States. Live-streaming doubled in the week after Italy announced its national quarantine, while video calling increased by 1,000 percent.

Meanwhile, nearly 50 percent of the content on Facebook’s news feed is now about the coronavirus, with a small number of influential users driving the reading habits and feeds of everyone else, according to an internal report reviewed by The Washington Post.

That means that certain individuals have more power to distort the ecosystem and that the company must act quickly if it wants to prevent people from consuming harmful information before its algorithms amplify those posts to even more people. (The memo said the company was considering trying to influence those influencers with more accurate information).

But Facebook is simultaneously wading through a minefield of potential problems as the surge in usage tests its technical systems.

Trump cast doubt Thursday on New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s assertion that his state, which has become the epicenter for the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, will need 30,000 ventilators to properly care for the influx of patients anticipated to flood hospitals in coming weeks.

“I have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they’re going to be,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity in a phone interview. “I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You know, you go into major hospitals sometimes they’ll have two ventilators, and now all of a sudden they’re saying, ‘Can we order 30,000 ventilators?’ ”

The president’s comments came shortly after the New York Times reported that the White House had abruptly called off a plan to announce this week that General Motors and Ventec Life Systems would partner to produce as many as 80,000 ventilators, citing concerns with the deal’s $1 billion price tag.

Trump made no mention of the canceled announcement while chatting with Hannity on Thursday night, but he did stress that the critical machinery is not cheap.

“When you talk about ventilators, that’s sort of like buying a car,” he said. “It’s very expensive. It’s a very intricate piece of equipment … The good ones are very, very expensive.”

"I don't believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You know, you go to major hospitals, sometimes they have 2 ventilators." -- Trump suggests Cuomo is exaggerating about the medical gear he needs to keep people alive pic.twitter.com/ADZb8fznOw

As the number of coronavirus cases in Britain continues to rise, firefighters will be tapped to assist with delivering food, collecting bodies and driving ambulances.

“We face a public health crisis unparalleled in our lifetimes. The coronavirus outbreak is now a humanitarian emergency and firefighters rightly want [to] help their communities,” said Matt Wrack, the general secretary of Britain’s Fire Brigade Union, according to Reuters. “Many fear the loss of life in this outbreak could be overwhelming and firefighters, who often handle terrible situations and incidents, are ready to step in to assist with body retrieval.”

On Friday, paramedics were also asked to temporarily return to their former roles to assist in the crisis.

“We are asking former members of our team to consider returning, if they can, to support us in helping Londoners in need,” London’s Ambulance Service tweeted on Friday.

The Guardian reported that the British police force will ask officers who retired in the last five years to help with the outbreak, with one in five British police officers reportedly either out sick or following self-isolation rules.

Firefighters have also been approved to drive ambulances in addition to their regular duties.

By Siobhán O'Grady

March 27, 2020 at 10:33 AM EDT

Experts failed to account for one factor in models, projections: Attacks from Trump supporters

In the month since the first U.S. coronavirus death, the United States has become a country of uncertainty.

Running beneath the quarantines, overrun hospitals and death counts — in a continuous loop through our national psyche — are basic questions leaders are struggling to answer: When can we safely lift these quarantines? How many people could die if we do it too early? Just how lethal will this pandemic turn out to be? And what exactly should be our next step?

This is why epidemiology exists. Its practitioners use math and scientific principles to understand disease, project its consequences and help policymakers make the best decisions for public good.

But one factor many modelers failed to predict was how politicized their work would become in the Trump era, and how that, in turn, could affect their models.

In recent days, a growing contingent of Trump supporters have pushed the narrative that health experts are part of a deep-state plot to hurt the president’s reelection efforts by damaging the economy and keeping America shut down as long as possible. The president himself pushed this idea in the early days of the outbreak, calling warnings about the coronavirus a kind of “hoax” meant to undermine him.

The notion is deeply troubling, leading health experts say, because what the country does next and how many people die depends largely on what evidence U.S. leaders and the public use to inform their decisions. Epidemiologists worry their research — intended to avert massive deaths in situations exactly like this pandemic — will be dismissed by federal leaders when it is needed most.

Trump calls for ouster of Rep. Massie from GOP as House debates stimulus bill

President Trump on Friday called for Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.) to be thrown out of the Republican Party in response to his threat of a procedural move that could delay House passage of the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill.

Trump made his views known in a tweet as the House debated the massive legislation. Scores of lawmakers returned to Washington on Friday after Massie signaled he might object to a lack of a quorum in the chamber, a move that could prevent plans to send the measure to Trump after a voice vote.

“Looks like a third rate Grandstander named @RepThomasMassie, a Congressman from, unfortunately, a truly GREAT State, Kentucky, wants to vote against the new Save Our Workers Bill in Congress,” Trump tweeted. “He just wants the publicity. He can’t stop it, only delay, which is both dangerous & costly. Workers & small businesses need money now in order to survive. Virus wasn’t their fault.”

Trump also wrote that it was “HELL” to deal with Democrats and urged Republicans to take back control of the House. But in the meantime, he wrote, “throw Massie out of Republican Party!”

A Belgian cat’s sick owner infected it with the coronavirus, health officials say

BRUSSELS — A cat in the Belgian city of Liège was infected by its sick owner with the coronavirus that causes covid-19 in people, Belgian health authorities said Friday, in another case of human-to-pet transmission that could raise fears about the health of household animals during the pandemic.

The officials did not make clear whether the cat survived the illness, which they said had diarrhea and experienced difficulty breathing. But they said they did not believe infected pets could become major vectors in spreading the disease.

“The veterinary medicine faculty in Liège reported that a coronavirus infection has been diagnosed in a cat. The cat lived with its owner, who started showing symptoms of the virus a week before the cat,” Steven van Gucht, a Belgian virologist who is an official spokesman for the government pandemic response, told reporters Friday. “It is an isolated case.”

Sick pet owners are urged to be careful around their animals, the Belgian Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain said in a statement.

“No close contact. Wash hands after touching,” the agency said. “Do not let it lick the face to prevent the pet from becoming a carrier and shedder of the virus for a short time.”

Infected owners should be sure to clean up their animals’ poop, the agency added. If a pet becomes infected, it should be quarantined, just like its owner, authorities said.

Pet lovers may want to be careful about petting other people’s animals right now, scientists have said. For now, “absolute priority” will be given to testing humans for the coronavirus, not their pets, at least in Belgium, van Gucht said.

Despite the tiny handful of pets that have been found to be infected, cats may indeed be susceptible to the virus, some researchers believe. Researchers have found that cats, along with ferrets, are prone to become infected by the SARS virus, unlike dogs.

A study published in late January by the Journal of Virology predicted that the cats, pigs, ferrets and some primates may be at greater risk of getting infected, because the virus that causes covid-19 can attach to their receptor cells.

By Michael Birnbaum

March 27, 2020 at 10:08 AM EDT

Hundreds in Iran die after ingesting industrial alcohol falsely seen as virus cure

Nearly 300 people in Iran have died and more than 1,000 have fallen sick after drinking methanol that they wrongly thought would shield them from catching the coronavirus, Iranian news outlets reported Friday.

Fake remedies have spread across social media in Iran as people remained suspicious of the government’s efforts to combat the spread of a virus that it initially downplayed.

The fact that methanol is an industrial alcohol and that drinking any form of alcohol is forbidden in the Shiite Muslim theocracy underscores the extent to which Iranians fear that their leadership is not adequately containing the virus.

One Iranian doctor told the Associated Press that the death toll from drinking methanol was around 480, with 2,850 people sickened. More than 29,000 confirmed cases of the virus and more than 2,000 related deaths have been reported in Iran — the largest death toll in the Middle East.

Iranians on social media have been touting false claims that a British schoolteacher and others cured themselves of the virus by ingesting whiskey and honey, the AP reported. Other widely shared messages wrongly suggest that drinking high-proof alcohol kills the virus.

By Sudarsan Raghavan

March 27, 2020 at 10:01 AM EDT

House debate underway on stimulus bill as members grudgingly return to Washington

Debate got underway Friday morning in the House on a $2.2 trillion economic relief package to address fallout from the coronavirus, with scores of lawmakers grudgingly returning to the Capitol after one GOP member threatened to raise a procedural objection.

Opening a scheduled three hours of debate, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) noted several precautions that were being taken in the chamber in response to the coronavirus outbreak. Lawmakers were “keeping a distance from one another not out of hostility but love for each other,” he said.

House leaders from both parties aim to pass the massive legislation on a voice vote and send it to President Trump by the end of the day. That strategy was intended to make it unnecessary for all of the sitting 430 House members to return to Washington.

But word went out late Thursday that the presence of at least half of them might be needed to thwart a bid by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to delay consideration of the measure. He suggested that he might raise procedural objections over the absence of a quorum if only a few lawmakers showed up to vote.

Dozens of lawmakers tweeted about their return to Washington, many of them clearly irritated.

“Heading to Washington to vote on pandemic legislation,” wrote Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.). “Because of one Member of Congress refusing to allow emergency action entire Congress must be called back to vote in House. Risk of infection and risk of legislation being delayed. Disgraceful. Irresponsible.”

Brendan Buck, a former senior aide to Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) when he served as House speaker, put it even more pointedly.

“It is quite the statement of his character that Thomas Massie is legitimately threatening the health of his colleagues, many in their 60s or 70s even 80s, for a stunt on a bill he knows is going to pass,” Buck tweeted. “I hope no one forgets what he’s done here.”

Lawmakers returning to Washington included several members from New York, who appeared despite an exhortation from federal officials for those traveling outside the coronavirus hot spot to self-quarantine in their new locations.

As the debate continued, a few dozen lawmakers, on each side of the aisle, largely ignored Hoyer’s request from Thursday night that they stay off the House floor unless they are imminently about to speak during the debate. However, they took seats at large distances from one another.

By John Wagner and Paul Kane

March 27, 2020 at 9:54 AM EDT

State Department appears to ask the world’s health workers to apply for U.S. visas, provoking outrage

NAIROBI — Late Thursday, the State Department posted a request on its website and on Twitter to “encourage medical professionals seeking work in the U.S. on a work or exchange visitor visa (H or J), particularly those working on #COVID19 issues, to contact the nearest U.S. Embassy/Consulate for a visa appointment.”

The announcement also indicated that those who were already in the United States on those visas should talk with their sponsors about extending them.

Routine visa services at U.S. embassies across the world were suspended March 20, as most embassies evacuated staff and shrank to skeleton staffs carrying out essential services.

On Friday, State Department officials clarified their original posting, saying they were only processing people already accepted for jobs or studies in the United States.

Ian Brownlee, the assistant secretary of state for Consular Affairs, said the United States was not seeking new applicants or giving preference to medical professionals. But he acknowledged that the initial message on the website was “not as clear as it might have been.”

“We’re ready to work with people who are already accepted into existing U.S. programs, and had otherwise planned to travel to the United States,” he told reporters. “We are not going out looking for others. These are people who were ready to come in.”

While the State Department has suspended routine visa services, Brownlee said they are still processing some visas for “certain cases.” Among those are visas for American couples seeking to adopt a child overseas, immigrants who might otherwise age out of eligibility, and medical professionals who already had been accepted for work or study.

Asked why it was considered necessary to put out a statement singling out medical professionals working on coronavirus, Brownlee said he would have to look into “how this all came to pass” before he could answer.

The initial announcement was widely panned on social media by users across the world who accused the U.S. government of promoting a potentially deadly brain drain of doctors and nurses away from countries with weaker health systems.

Others noted how difficult procuring these visas can be in normal times, often taking years to process, and were resentful that the rules would be changed so drastically in a moment of crisis.

Bearak reported from Nairobi, Morrello from Washington.

By Max Bearak and Carol Morello

March 27, 2020 at 9:46 AM EDT

Should U.S. brace for another bad week? ‘Depends on where you are,’ surgeon general says

U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said Monday that Americans should brace for a difficult week in the fight to contain the novel coronavirus. On Friday, he said the worst is yet to come.

“It’s important for people to know that everyone’s curve is going to look different,” Adams said on “CBS This Morning,” adding: “This week was a particularly bad week for New York.”

"It depends on where you are. We're hopeful that next week New York will start to come down... We also see hot spots like Detroit, like Chicago, like New Orleans, will have a worse week next week" —@Surgeon_Generalpic.twitter.com/YSR1JCarxW

The outbreak in New York, with nearly 40,000 confirmed cases and at least 461 deaths, far outpaces infections in other states, according to The Post’s database. Adams said the forecast “depends on where you are."

“We’re hopeful that next week New York will start to come down,” he said. “We also see hot spots like Detroit, like Chicago, like New Orleans, will have a worse week next week.”

On ABC’s “Good Morning America,” the surgeon general said that “some places haven’t hit their peak yet” and that residents there will continue to need significant intervention and prevention.

Adams gave vague answers during his morning-show appearances when pressed on President Trump’s assertion Thursday that the federal government may start creating tiered regulations for crowds and businesses depending on a state or county’s caseload. Adams said officials in D.C. want to give local authorities the testing data and tools they need to make decisions for their own communities.

“Some places, it doesn’t matter if it’s Easter or Memorial Day or if it’s Labor Day,” he said in response to a question about timelines. “We know that we want people to be thinking about what they can do now so that we can quickly get through this with as few deaths and as few hospitalizations as possible."

By Katie Mettler

March 27, 2020 at 9:19 AM EDT

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tests positive for coronavirus, says he has developed ‘mild symptoms’

LONDON — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he has tested positive for the coronavirus.

Taking to Twitter on Friday, Johnson wrote: “Over the last 24 hours I have developed mild symptoms and tested positive for coronavirus. I am now self-isolating, but I will continue to lead the government’s response via videoconference as we fight this virus.”

Johnson also shared a video message in which he once again urged Britons to “stay at home” to stop the spread of the virus.

Johnson, 55, was last seen in public applauding health-care workers on Thursday evening from the door of 10 Downing Street as a part of a national celebration of the front-line nurses and doctors.

Johnson has recently appeared in good health. After initial hesitation to embrace the strict measures pursued elsewhere in Europe to slow the spread of the coronavirus, the prime minister recently changed course and began to hold his meetings via videoconference, sitting at a table alone and looking at a large TV screen.

The prime minister — whose fiancee, Carrie Symonds, is pregnant — appeared at the government’s daily news conference two days ago.

On his doctor’s recommendation, Johnson will isolate himself for seven days and will forgo public appearances and group meetings.

Later on Friday, Chris Witty, chief medical officer in England, tweeted that he was also experiencing symptoms consistent with covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. He said he “will be self-isolating at home for the next seven days” but will continue to advise the government on its medical response to the outbreak.

Buckingham Palace said Queen Elizabeth II last saw the prime minister on March 11 and “remains in good health,” local news outlets reported. After her son, Prince Charles, tested positive for the virus, the queen left the palace to stay at Windsor Castle, west of London.

Within an hour of Johnson’s disclosure that he has the coronavirus, Britain’s health secretary, Matt Hancock, also announced that he has tested positive. In a video message shared on Twitter, Hancock said: “Upon medical advice, I was tested, and that test has been positive. . . . Fortunately for me, those symptoms so far have been very mild."

Hancock said he would isolate himself until next Thursday and had been working from home in recent days.

Johnson is the first leader of the Group of 20 nations to test positive for the virus. Two others — German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — have entered self-quarantine over concerns that they may have been exposed to the virus.

In Russia, another G-20 country, a presidential administration employee has tested positive for the coronavirus, but that person did not come in contact with President Vladimir Putin, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday.

Catholic bishops say it’s okay to eat meat on Fridays during Lent because of the coronavirus

In late February, countless Christians pledged to give up indulgences such as alcohol, chocolate and Netflix for the duration of Lent.

What they didn’t know was that in the coming weeks, they’d also be giving up social gatherings, concerts, sports, eating in restaurants and virtually every other aspect of ordinary life.

As the novel coronavirus has given new meaning to a season of self-sacrifice, some faith leaders are granting worshipers a pass from traditional Lenten rituals. On Thursday, Bishop James F. Checchio, whose diocese in New Jersey includes about 600,000 Catholics, announced that he was waiving the requirement to abstain from eating meat on Fridays. Both the food shortages in grocery stores and the fact that people were already sacrificing so much had factored into his decision, he wrote, adding that meat was still off-limits for Good Friday.

Catholic dioceses from Brooklyn to Pittsburgh to Houma-Thibodaux, La., have issued similar decrees over the last week. In Louisiana, Bishop Shelton J. Fabre wrote that the coronavirus “has placed most, if not all, of our faithful in a situation wherein obtaining food, including meal alternatives from meat, the rising cost of fish and other forms of seafood, and even the challenge of being able to obtain groceries without endangering their health, make it clearly difficult for them to fulfill this practice.”

Those who choose to eat meat on the remaining Fridays of Lent should do works of charity and piety instead, he suggested.

Michigan health system has contingency plan to deny ventilators, ICU care to patients with low chance of survival

A Detroit area health system has developed a contingency plan to deny ventilators and intensive care treatment to coronavirus patients with a poor chance of surviving, including those with some preexisting medical conditions.

Details of the plan were listed on a draft letter from Henry Ford Health Systems to families. The letter circulated on social media late on Thursday, although the company later clarified that it has not yet needed to implement the policy.

In an emailed statement, Adnan Munkarah, chief clinical officer at the Henry Ford Health System said: “With a pandemic of this nature, health systems must be prepared for a worst case scenario."

“It is our hope we never have to apply (these guidelines) and we will always do everything we can to care for our patients, utilizing every resource we have to make that happen,” said Munkarah, according to the statement.

According to the letter, Henry Ford hospitals would de-prioritize most patients with severe heart, lung, kidney or liver failure, terminal cancers and severe trauma or burns. Any patient who does not improve with a ventilator or ICU care would also be pulled off those treatments and instead be given pain-control measures.

“Some patients will be extremely sick and very unlikely to survive their illness even with critical treatment,” read the letter. “Treating these patients would take away resources for patients who might survive.”

As The Post’s Ariana Eunjung Cha reported, hospitals dealing with especially large outbreaks are weighing their standard approach — to save dying patients at all costs — against the risk that doing so would expose many more health workers to the virus and overwhelm the facility.

Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, among others, has been discussing a do-not-resuscitate policy. That directive would tell health workers not to perform CPR if an infected patient stops breathing or their heart stops beating.

U.S. markets signal steep fall after three straight days of gains

U.S. futures markets were deep in the red Friday morning, interrupting a stellar three-day run and offering a stinging reminder that the government’s $2.2 trillion rescue package won’t blunt investor anxiety just yet.

Stocks soared this week as the landmark stimulus package came into sharper view. The Senate passed the sprawling bill late Wednesday. The House is now aiming to expedite its own vote on Friday.

But as lawmakers scramble to get the legislation to Trump, the pandemic’s toll continues to multiply. The United States now has the most confirmed cases in the world and has surpassed 1,000 deaths.

A record 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, and economists say more than 40 million Americans could lose their jobs by mid-April.

South Africa enters lockdown as known cases surpass 1,000

NAIROBI — As South Africa’s 57 million people entered a three-week lockdown on Friday and took stock of a stark new reality, the country’s health ministry announced its first two coronavirus-related deaths and said known cases have topped 1,000 — a first on the African continent.

South Africa is the only African country to have tested extensively, administering more than 20,000 tests since the first case, and the growing number of positive results put pressure on President Cyril Ramaphosa to enact strict measures to limit movement and gatherings.

In a speech earlier this week that was widely lauded for its clarity and conviction, Ramaphosa announced the impending lockdown, during which people will be allowed to leave home only to buy food, seek care, collect welfare grants or take walks by themselves. Running, dog-walking and even the purchase of cigarettes and alcohol have been banned.

On Thursday, Ramaphosa addressed the nation again, this time wearing army fatigues, a symbolic gesture never made before by the former business executive. Army and police personnel were deployed across the country to enforce the lockdown, but Ramaphosa urged them to be a “force of kindness” in a country that is still recovering from the trauma of decades of military-enforced apartheid that ended in 1994.

Their mission is the “most important in the history of our country,” he said. “Our people are terrified right now, and we should not do anything to make their situation worse.”

9 in 10 Americans are staying home ‘as much as possible’ and practicing social distancing

The spreading coronavirus pandemic has brought massive and sudden disruption to the daily lives of most Americans amid rapidly rising fears that they could become ill with covid-19, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Almost overnight, the threat from the virus has changed habits and lifestyles. Roughly 9 in 10 say they are staying home “as much as possible” and are practicing social distancing to lessen the risk of getting the virus. Nearly 9 in 10 say they have stopped going to bars and restaurants. About 6 in 10 say they have stockpiled food and household supplies at home.

On the political front, President Trump narrowly wins approval for his handling of the outbreak, and his overall approval rating has grown five percentage points since February, to 48 percent, even as most Americans say he was too slow to take action in the early days of the virus’s spread. The rise in Trump’s approval rating, however, is far smaller than some other presidents have experienced in times of national crisis.

Hong Kong bans public gatherings of more than four, closes gyms and amusement centers

HONG KONG — Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam backtracked Friday on a proposal to ban the sale of alcohol in bars and restaurants and instead implemented a host of other social-distancing measures as her territory saw its biggest daily spike of coronavirus cases on record.

Gatherings of more than four people at public places will be banned, Lam said in a news conference, for a period of two weeks beginning Saturday. Exemptions will be made for government meetings, workplace-related meetings, weddings and funerals.

Hong Kong will also order a number of businesses to shutter for the same period, including fitness centers, cinemas, bathhouses, gaming centers and arcades.

“We have a public health emergency at hand, so we need stronger measures,” Lam said. In the past two weeks, the number of cases in the city have spiked twofold, with 90 percent of the cases imported. On Friday, the city announced 65 new cases, bringing the tally to 518.

Hong Kong so far has not introduced any regulation to mandate social distancing but said it needed to take these measures to ensure that the early gains in fighting the spread of the virus would not be erased. Singapore and other cities are imposing similar steps. Restaurants will also have to enforce a space of at least five feet between tables.

Death toll in Spain climbs by almost 20 percent, with Madrid hit hardest

Spain announced another major surge in coronavirus fatalities on Friday, with 769 new deaths — the biggest increase in total numbers this week. The overall death toll in the country increased from 4,089 to 4,858, by around 19 percent.

The number of confirmed cases in the country increased from 56,188 to 64,059, meaning that the growth rate of the number of confirmed cases slightly declined.

The capital Madrid remained the epicenter of Spain’s outbreak, even though figures in Catalonia and other parts of the country also increased.

Madrid has in recent days transformed numerous city landmarks to address the emergency situation. Madrid’s main ice skating rink is operating as the city morgue; the 2,412 deaths since the outbreak began have overwhelmed the city’s funeral parlors. The IFEMA convention center was transformed into a field hospital, with 1,300 operational beds and an ability to expand to 5,000 beds.

On Thursday, Spanish soccer titan Real Madrid announced it would use its renowned Santiago Bernabéu Stadium as a medical supply storage center in the battle against covid-19.

The team, working in collaboration with Spain’s High Council of Sports, said in a statement it would pass all stored supplies on to Spanish health officials under the authority of the Spanish government for distribution “so the resources, so necessary in the current health emergency situation, are employed in the best and most efficient manner.”

Australian armed forces deployed to enforce isolation orders

Australia’s government said Friday it would ask its military to enforce isolation orders, as the confirmed number of coronavirus cases in the country surpassed 3,000.

Australian citizens and residents returning home account for most confirmed cases, and returnees will be forced to self-quarantine in hotels or other repurposed accommodations for two weeks starting this weekend. The Australian Defense Force (ADF) will assist with the enforcement of self-isolation orders, including among those who are already quarantined in their own homes.

Countries as varied as China, Jordan, South Africa and Italy have sent service members into the streets. At no time since World War II have so many nations wrestled with what it means to be in a state of emergency and how to impose fundamental and sudden changes in human behavior.

Deploying troops is a startling but often effective way to keep people indoors, but its impact could ripple well beyond the end of the coronavirus, as countries decide when — and if — to cede the powers stemming from a global pandemic.

In Lebanon, Chile and Hong Kong, beset for months by protests, fear of the coronavirus has allowed the state to ban public gatherings without overtly violating civil liberties. In several countries, leaders have used the public health crisis to suppress freedom of speech and other constitutional protections.

“It’s really easy to ratchet up these kinds of powers and really hard to ratchet them back down,” said Juliette Kayyem, an assistant secretary of homeland security in the Obama administration. “Once the military is seen as a solution to a public health problem, it’s hard to get the military out of the way.”

BTS’s North American tour, Art Basel postponed

Both the North American tour for BTS, the massively popular K-pop band, and Art Basel, the world’s biggest modern art fair, have been rescheduled for September as the global pandemic continues to take a toll on the United States and Europe.

BTS, a seven-member band whose sales make up 0.3 percent of South Korea’s GDP, had previously postponed four kickoff performances there earlier this year when the virus was at the peak of its devastation in Asia.

But as the coronavirus moved west, the group’s label, Big Hit Entertainment, decided to push back its U.S. and Canada stops on the Map of the Soul tour, according to Billboard. Tickets purchased for the original concert dates, from April to June, will be honored later this year.

Art Basel, which was set to host its 50th annual show in Switzerland this year, was also postponed due to the pandemic’s “unprecedented impact worldwide,” the event’s organizers said.

The fair’s Hong Kong edition, the biggest international art fair in Asia, was also canceled last month and moved to an online platform instead.

House leaders hope to vote Friday on a massive emergency relief package that would inject trillions of dollars into the economy, giving out payments to businesses and residents who have been badly hurt by the novel coronavirus.

After unanimous approval from the Senate earlier this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the measure would receive “strong bipartisan support,” but not unanimous consent. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who opposes the bill, said Thursday that he is considering a procedural move that could delay its passage to the weekend.

The $2 trillion aid bill, the biggest in U.S. history, comes at a time when it is badly needed: A record 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, according to figures reported Thursday, marking the biggest jump in new jobless claims in history.

That could mark the beginning of an economic crisis facing American workers and businesses, according to some economists, who say stimulus bill won’t prevent a recession — the slump will end only when the pandemic is contained.

Still, the toll of the virus only appears to be growing worse. As of Thursday evening, U.S. health officials reported that more than 1,000 people had died of related complications, though overwhelmed state and local authorities are omitting some deaths entirely.

As cases in the Seattle area appear to be leveling off, New York City has emerged as the epicenter of the country’s outbreak U.S. Officials there are moving to distribute antimalarial drugs to seriously ill patients, spurred by political leaders like President Trump to try a treatment that has not proved to be effective.

As the number of confirmed cases is beginning to spike elsewhere, including in Louisiana, Michigan and Texas, tensions between President Trump and governors from hard-hit states are rising.

Trump insisted Thursday that Americans are eager to “go back to work,” telling governors that his administration may soon categorize the risk level for each county in the nation.

That could lay the groundwork for less-affected areas to relax strict measures, conflicts with warnings from public health experts that abandoning current restrictions too soon could be potentially catastrophic.

More signs of a prolonged coronavirus shutdown emerge in Europe

BERLIN — Despite some cautious optimism among health officials in Europe earlier this week that the coronavirus infection curve may be beginning to flatten in some countries, the continent remained in upheaval Friday, and cases continued to climb.

Europe’s two most-affected countries — Italy and Spain — continued to see major increases Thursday in cases and deaths.

The export-dependent nation is expected to be hit severely by the virus. Some economists predict the economy will contract between 5 and 20 percent this year, depending on how long and how strictly measures to curb the spread of the virus are enforced.

Apart from the severe hit to the German economy, the economic impact of the crisis might be felt even more severely in countries that already struggled with high debt and weak growth before the crisis, especially Italy.

Some countries are preparing for a prolonged battle against the virus, with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban saying the peak of the outbreak could be in June or July. Orban announced a two-week lockdown Friday, imposing restrictions similar to measures already in place across parts of the continent.

In Britain, the property market was approaching a standstill this week, after the government said citizens should avoid moving houses in the coming weeks — partially to enforce social distancing but also because banks have limited capacity to offer mortgages at this point.

Air traffic across Europe continued to decline, and some airlines instead offered their planes to European Union governments for rescue flights. France announced Friday that it has repatriated 100,000 people stuck abroad within a week, but 30,000 of its citizens remain overseas.

By Rick Noack

March 27, 2020 at 6:00 AM EDT

English health-care workers won’t have to pay to park at work during coronavirus outbreak

LONDON — The British government this week announced “free parking to NHS [National Health Service] workers and social care staff” in England during the coronavirus outbreak, after a petition rapidly gained support.

More than 400,000 people signed a petition appealing to Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak to scrap fees for health-care staff working around the clock to save lives during the global covid-19 crisis.

The petition, entitled “Please thank your NHS workforce. Stop charging them to use their staff car park,” garnered the support of thousands who called on the British government to help ease the pressure on staff working increasingly long shifts to try to save lives.

“Our NHS is facing an unprecedented challenge, and I will do everything I can to ensure our dedicated staff have whatever they need during this unprecedented time,” Health Secretary Matt Hancock said.

Labour Party lawmaker David Lammy called for the move to stop charging hospital staff across 150 car parks to become permanent, tweeting: “This should not just be temporary during #COVID19. Let’s make it so that NHS staff never have to pay to park in hospitals ever again.”

According to the BBC, a freedom of information request revealed that health-care staff were paying up to 1,300 pounds ($1,586) a year in parking charges.

Britain’s death toll climbed to 578 on Thursday as thousands of people took to their windows and front yards to clap for Britain’s emergency services. There are almost 12,000 confirmed cases of the virus across the United Kingdom, and a lockdown remains in place.

By Jennifer Hassan

March 27, 2020 at 5:29 AM EDT

U.S. stock futures, European markets dip

European stocks and U.S. index futures fell Friday, as this week’s market rally — driven by hopes that U.S. stimulus spending would cushion a coronavirus-induced downturn — appeared to stall.

On Thursday, U.S. equities registered their first three-day rally since mid-February, boosted by the largest aid package in history even amid dismal unemployment numbers.

But investors appeared to be assessing whether the rally lacks conviction. Dow Jones industrial average and Standard & Poor’s 500 index futures retreated about 1.7 percent, and oil prices were little changed.

Most Asian markets posted moderate gains Friday. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index rose more than 3.8 percent, while the benchmark indexes in Hong Kong and Shanghai all closed less than 1 percent higher. Only Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 fell among the major Asian markets, down 5.3 percent.

By Teo Armus

March 27, 2020 at 3:11 AM EDT

Expectant mothers stare down the prospect of giving birth alone

Expectant mothers planning to deliver at two major hospital networks in New York must be prepared for a new reality this week: They will have to give birth without a loved one by their side.

At Mount Sinai Hospital, partners and doulas have been barred from entering the labor and delivery floor, part of a plan to treat every expectant mother as if she has the novel coronavirus.

Hospitals across the country are swiftly adopting new protocols for pregnant women and obstetric departments in an effort to prevent the spread of the virus. In-person prenatal classes are moving online. Hospitals are ensuring that women in labor will not mix with patients in the emergency room. And, perhaps most controversially, some hospitals are adopting no-visitor policies for women giving birth.

“I’m not a very popular guy in New York City,” said Michael Brodman, chief of obstetrics at Mount Sinai. Brodman made the decision to bar partners and recognizes it will add stress to an already stressful time. But he could not risk someone endangering the lives of health-care workers, mothers and newborn babies. The virus is already affecting obstetrics: Brodman said eight nurses and four doctors in labor and delivery have been diagnosed with the virus.

Washington state officials see hope as cases appear to be leveling off

KIRKLAND, Wash. — The suburban hospital that handled the first onslaught of coronavirus patients weeks ago — a crush of seriously ill and dying nursing home residents that signaled the beginning of the national health crisis — is now offering cautious optimism to people across the United States who are searching for an end to the springtime nightmare: They believe they might have flattened the curve here.

At EvergreenHealth Medical Center, two miles from the shuttered Lifecare nursing home where 35 patient deaths were linked to the virus, officials say their rate of new covid-19 cases has remained steady for two weeks, leveling off at a trickle. On some days, doctors here see just one new case and haven’t seen more than four in a single day since mid-March. Few need admission to the intensive care unit, which is now half full, two weeks after overflow necessitated transfers to nearby hospitals.

“We don’t know if this last two weeks has been a calm before the storm or if the social distancing and all those things that are being practiced are working,” said EvergreenHealth CEO Jeff Tomlin, whose hospital has handled 40 of Washington state’s more than 130 virus-related deaths. He said the hospital is no longer overwhelmed, though it still lacks needed supplies.

“You will never hear me declaring victory at any point of this,” he said. “But I can tell you we’re making sure we have enough supplies, beds and ventilators as we can. I’d say we’re gearing up just in case a surge does happen like in New York or in Italy.”

Trump tweets that he had ‘very good’ conversation with China’s Xi

President Trump spoke Friday with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in what he characterized on Twitter as “a very good conversation,” which comes as their countries have been locked in escalating strategic competition and a political war of words exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

“Discussed in great detail the CoronaVirus that is ravaging large parts of our Planet,” Trump wrote, referring to the novel coronavirus that causes the disease covid-19. “China has been through much & has developed a strong understanding of the Virus. We are working closely together. Much respect!”

Just finished a very good conversation with President Xi of China. Discussed in great detail the CoronaVirus that is ravaging large parts of our Planet. China has been through much & has developed a strong understanding of the Virus. We are working closely together. Much respect!

A summary of the call published by Chinese state media reported that Xi emphasized cooperation between the two countries as key to improving U.S.-China relations. He also expressed his concern about the the spread of the epidemic throughout the United States.

Trump and Xi last spoke by phone in February to discuss a trade deal between Washington and Beijing.

This time, however, the president postponed his chat with Xi to appear Thursday night as a guest on one of his favorite Fox News television shows, he told Sean Hannity, the host of Hannity.

“Mr. President, thank you,” said Hannity at the start of his program, according to Newsweek. “Apparently, I heard you in the press conference, you had a 9 p.m. call with President Xi of China, let me start there. How did that go?”

Cruise tells passengers to isolate after crew member tests positive

The Carnival Freedom set sail in Texas on March 8, in spite of a State Department warning that day urging Americans to avoid cruise ships — an especially challenging battleground for fighting the new coronavirus.

But now, it seems, passengers aboard that six-day cruise may have been exposed to the illness.

In a letter Thursday, Carnival Cruises said a crew member aboard that vessel had tested positive to the virus, according to the Miami Herald.

The employee was hospitalized Monday and received positive test results two days later, the Herald reported. The company asked all passengers to isolate themselves for 14 days.

Last week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had already instructed anyone who had been on a cruise since early March to do the same, as experts warned that cruise ships were lagging in response to an elevated risk of contamination onboard.

All passengers aboard the Freedom disembarked in Galveston, Texas on March 14, just one day after Carnival halted all cruise operations. Since then, the Freedom has been docked in Gulfport, Miss., where crew members remain on board in single rooms.

Any employees who came into contact with the sick crew member were told to isolate, a Carnival spokesperson told the Herald.

Early on Thursday, federal health officials said that two former passengers aboard the Grand Princess had died of complications related to the virus. That virus-stricken ship was stalled off the California coast for days as officials debated what to do with its thousands of passengers, who were later quarantined on military bases across the U.S.

By Teo Armus

March 27, 2020 at 2:15 AM EDT

Singapore criminalizes standing too close to someone

Intentionally standing or sitting too close to someone is now a crime in Singapore and grounds for six months in jail or a fine of nearly $7,000.

“Stricter measures will come into effect” on Friday, the Ministry of Health said in a statement, “to limit gatherings outside of work and school to 10 persons or fewer, and ensure that physical distancing of at least one meter [three feet] is maintained in settings where interactions are non-transient.”

The government announced the new measures on Tuesday, which also banned standing in a line or sitting in a restaurant less than three feet away from someone. The Ministry of Health additionally ordered all bars and entertainment venues to close and barred gatherings of more than 10 people outside of work or school.

Singapore has one of the world’s highest population densities and the city-state has in part relied on intensive surveillance and curtailment of public freedoms to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.

By Miriam Berger

March 27, 2020 at 12:54 AM EDT

As coronavirus looms, U.S. proceeding with dramatic reduction of aid to Yemen

The Trump administration plans to move forward with a dramatic reduction of humanitarian assistance to Yemen effective Friday in response to restrictions imposed on aid by Iranian-linked Houthi rebels, U.S. officials and relief workers said.

U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a decision that has not been announced publicly, say the move is intended to prompt the rebels to lift measures in areas of Yemen they control that have made it difficult for aid groups to operate.

But aid officials warn that the cut could prove disastrous ahead of what many fear will be a crippling coronavirus outbreak in a country that is already the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

House leaders sought to expedite the emergency $2 trillion relief bill aimed at mitigating the financial havoc caused by the coronavirus pandemic amid uncertainty about whether a renegade lawmaker could delay sending the measure to President Trump.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) agreed to approve the measure with a voice vote Friday that would not require all 430 current members of the House to travel to the Capitol, given that two lawmakers have contracted the disease and others are self-quarantining due to exposure to confirmed carriers.

The leadership also is taking meticulous steps to change the protocol for debate and voting to ensure the safety of lawmakers.

But at least one lawmaker is considering upending the plans for swift passage. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said Thursday that he opposed the bill, approved unanimously by the Senate on Wednesday, as it would add to the national debt. The libertarian lawmaker also is concerned that voting without a quorum present — the majority of the House chamber — would violate the Constitution. He said he has yet to decide whether to press the issue, which could delay a House vote until late Saturday or Sunday.

First unaccompanied migrant children in U.S. government custody test positive

Three unaccompanied migrant children in U.S. custody tested positive for the novel coronavirus, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) said Thursday, marking the first confirmed infections among children detained by the U.S. immigration services.

ORR, the agency in charge of around 3,500 unaccompanied children, did not provide details on the age or nationality of the children, who are being held in a New York facility, CNN reported.

“ORR’s medical team is working with the programs in New York and local health department to collect information and determine next steps,” it said in a statement shared with CNN.

As coronavirus case have surged in New York, ORR has stopped placing children in facilities or releasing them to sponsors there. Still, cases within the agency are already on the rise: Five employees and one contractor working at three New York facilities tested positive, in addition to one staff member at a Texas facility and a foster parent in Washington State, according to CNN.

Immigrant and asylum seeker advocates have been calling for U.S. authorities to release detained migrants over fears that the virus will spread fast through crowded detention centers. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported its first detainee — a 31-year-old Mexican national held in New Jersey — testing positive for the virus on Tuesday.

Separately on Thursday, ICE released two men detained in Seattle who have preexisting medical conditions that put them at extra risk of dying from covid-19, the Associated Press reported.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington and Northwest Immigrant Rights Project had initially filed for their release along with seven other detainees on March 16.

President Trump announced on March 20 that due to coronavirus fears U.S. authorities will now immediately send back immigrants and asylum seekers caught trying to illegally enter the United States via the southern border with Mexico.

The Mexican state of Chihuahua, which lies along the U.S. border, said Thursday that it will build a shelter to house these deportees during a required two-week quarantine upon their return, the AP reported.

By Miriam Berger

March 27, 2020 at 12:38 AM EDT

Stress-baking and hoarding has led to a retail egg shortage

A chicken will lay about an egg a day. Any amount of heckling and cajoling will not change that. Americans are stockpiling eggs, and it’s about a week from peak pre-Easter egg buying. The Bunny is getting nervous.

Experts say this is an on-shelf shortage, that there are enough eggs in the works. But if Americans — now cooped up and stress-baking for their families — continue to markedly change their cooking behaviors, American egg producers will have to grow their flocks. And that takes time: It takes 22 weeks for a chick to become a laying hen.

Vital Farms, the largest supplier of naturally raised eggs in the United States, shipped 15 million eggs to 13,000 grocery stores last week. According to chief executive Russell Diez-Canseco, that is up to 150 percent more than normal.

“The reality is we don’t have twice as many eggs as we did in January,” he said. “Most suppliers build in some extra inventory for Easter, but retailers have burned through that inventory.”

According to Nielsen data, sales of eggs in shells went up 44 percent for the week ending March 14 compared with a year ago, with retailers ordering six times normal volume. Wholesale egg prices have risen 180 percent since the beginning of March, according to Urner Barry, which does market price reporting. Google searches for baking recipes without eggs have spiked.

It was the worst week for the economy in decades. The pain is just beginning.

The record 3.3 million jobless claims reported Thursday mark the beginning of an economic crisis facing American workers and businesses — a slump, experts say, that will only end when the coronavirus pandemic is contained.

The economy has entered a deep recession that has echoes of the Great Depression in the way it has devastated so many businesses and consumers, triggering mass layoffs and threatening to set off a chain reaction of bankruptcies and financial losses for companies large and small.

What sets this downturn apart is how rapidly the virus — and the economic pain — have spread. It remains a wide open question whether this will become a long-lasting slump or a short-lived flash recession.

Economists say the jobless claims reported Thursday, which reflected workers seeking unemployment insurance last week, is the start of a massive spike in unemployment that could result in over 40 million Americans losing their jobs by mid-April.

U.S. diplomats race to get Americans home while they can

After a slow start to a rapidly spreading pandemic, U.S. embassies and consulates around the world are diverting most of their resources to the task of evacuating U.S. citizens.

In Ecuador, the U.S. consul general and ambassador have gone to the airport in the middle of the night to smooth hitches for jittery Americans departing on chartered flights. The U.S. Embassy staff in Morocco has handled baggage check-ins for airlifts of American tourists.

Consular officers in Peru are converting a hangar used by U.S. narcotics control officers into a processing center for evacuation flights. And in Brazil, where nine in 10 embassy employees are teleworking, consular officers in the port city of Recife got more than 100 vacationing Americans off a “sick” cruise ship with two infected passengers and put them on a bus to the airport.

Similar scenes are underway at many other diplomatic missions, with the entire world under a State Department do-not-travel advisory.

As lawmakers and marooned travelers complained that the State Department wasn’t doing enough to get people home quickly, diplomats were enlisted for tasks normally handled by commercial airlines. Bilateral negotiations focus on ways to maneuver around local rules and regulations to allow empty aircraft to fly rescue missions into countries and depart with stressed-out travelers.

“It’s never been on a global scale like this,” a diplomat in Ecuador, a veteran of 17 years in the Foreign Service, said after apologizing for sounding groggy after sleeping only four hours the previous night. “This requires a lot of creativity, talking with the department, outreach to American citizens.”